Search This Blog

Booster Alts on Killmails

Today's post caused some waves around the Community, as I hoped it would. EN24 even picked up the feed and ran with it. As usual when that happens the comments over there amuse me to no end. People try so hard. (Some good comments also by the way. And the last post here on Eveoganda got some good debate rolling, nicely done as always educated readers!)

There does seem to be some general confusion and butt-hurt - especially amongst the security blanket crowd. (That is my endearing knick-name for those elite players that love their win-buttons so much.)

Like any five year old, try to remove the security blanket at your own peril.

I would like to explain myself clearly and understandably for those not following along at home. I am not suggesting an end to boosting. I am not annoyed by booster alts. Even with my bare knuckle play-style I see the need for links every so often, especially when the other guys are determined to always use them. Frankly I enjoy killing ships that are boosted, it is awesome defeating someone who thinks they've found a win button - without using a win-button yourself. Very satisfying. You should try it. The tears are hilarious.

So here is the gist of my argument, the genesis if you will:

Two ship are fighting. No one else is on grid with them. One of them explodes. The victor is using boosts from a T3 ship safely parked somewhere off-grid. The killmail lands on a killboard somewhere and shows up as a solo kill. That is how things currently work in Eve. This is not accurate. And it has nothing to do with Eve being fair, unfair, hard, easy, whatever. It has everything to do with not being accurate. Another ship was involved in that victory. A ship without whom the victor may very well have lost the fight. That other ship isn't something the pilot ingested, like drugs or implants, it is an asset flown by another player or account. That ship needs to show up on the kill. Once it does the kill will be accurate. Until then it is a lie.

In my humble opinion this is not something that can be argued about. This is not about boosts being on-grid or off-grid, that is something I have personal opinions about - but I also understand changing it now could be problematic. And I am ok with that.

Fix this. For those of us that PvP all the time this is a huge deal. It is not a game-breaker or something we'll rage quit over. Of course not. But it is a small change that will have a dramatic and lasting effect on PvP in a PvP game. It will, trust me. Big dramatic changes. But, more importantly, it will fix something that has been broken since boosts were introduced. Yes, that's right, we didn't always have them.

This needs fixed in my opinion. Agree or disagree, that is your right. My right is to beat the drum and try to get something done about it.

I agree with the 1v1 without any cloaky or logi support my friend. That is totally legitimate to seek a fair fight in this regard. And I believe it could only be implemented in the duel 1v1 agreement. Otherwise though, I'm afraid however you shout or beat your drums, it won't matter...unless the Goon drums beat along with yours.

Killmails are based on data associated to the exploding ship and both, logi and booster, are not effects applied to it. That is the big design hurdle CCP needs to overcome. I think it would be far more simple to implement a on-grid boosting only than to include it on the killmail.

We, bees, understand your butt-hurt article. We sympathize with your losses to 1v1(+1 cloaky), and we appreciate your written and graphical input in the contributed publicity of our game. However, as leaders in T3 manufacturing, market and media control, we are also down voting your complaints prior to this issue. You may input colossal effort and time to bring in followers in your cause, but we, bees, will always be stronger than any voice in our game. We do nevertheless, hope that you will do your best to keep swimming against the river flow - it brings us, bees, some entertainment and good laughs.

It's a little alienating to see all this raving about 'elite' 'solo' players. Some commenters make it sound like nobody is ever honest about their links. Or that it's somehow shameful to use links. They're a tool people nothing more nothing less. Plenty of people that use links (including myself) go through absolutely no effort to hide them when they use them (I roam without them a lot too, they're a bother to drag around). I'll even plain tell people if the ask after a fight. Links widen the engagement profile of ships, they allow a solo pilots to take fights they otherwise couldn't. Or run content they otherwise could not.

Sure there's people that use them to get an unfair advantage but that is hardly the only use of links, many people with other play-styles use links for very legitimate reasons.

If somebody lies about using that tool that is down to that person not the tool being used. So sure put them on killmails by all means, but stop demonising the tool, the links themselves are not the issue.

p.s. Comparing people to charlie and his baby blanket is hardly a way to start a constructive debate Rixx. It's a needless attempt to aggravate people and a poorly concealed attempt at character assassination on those that don't agree with you on top of that. But to answer your question from the other day, sure I still love you.

If I just wrote a post that said, "Hey everyone, we should have T3s on killmails y'know", no one would have paid any attention to it. Instead, as usual, I wrote a post that achieved that goal and that a whole bunch of people read, responded, and considered. A post that got CSM attention and that will echo and ripple out from my little pond for a few days.

Will anything happen? I have zero control over that. Probably not. I already know how hard it is to affect change, I've been down this road many, many times. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn't. But the results have nothing to do with the effort. And they in no way diminish the cause.

I have nothing personal against the use of boosters. And despite the childish, largely anonymous comments of some, I believe the vast majority of players agree with me. And that is enough for me to keep trying. In the meantime we'll keep marking all the booster alts and exploding the boosted ships like we always do.

I agree with you entirely. Accounts which are modifying the stats of another account should be incorporated into kills. This would also include any logi involved on either side (if you rep a target getting a killmail, you show up on that kill mail too, perhaps as "assistants".

And Rixx, you guys left by the time I could reship. I wanted to fight you. :(

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE This Saturday, May 23rd, A Band Apart will be hosting their fifth Frigate Free For All (FFA) in Ouelletta, Verge Vendor, from 16:00-20:00 Eve time. 4,000 Frigates will be available for FREE to all participants in the Federal Navy Academy station at Planet V Moon V. “The free Frigates will be fit so that anyone, no matter their skill level or experience, can fly one and enjoy a fun environment of friendly combat,” said Rixx Javix, Executor of A Band Apart alliance and host of the event, “this is still Eve of course, but this is as safe of an environment as we can provide.” The last FFA saw 2,000 players take to space and resulted in over 45,000 explosions over the entire afternoon, “The red dot on the New Eden map was huge!”, Javix said. During the course of the event on Saturday special events will be announced in local, giving pilots a chance to score valuable kills and loot - all provided by pilots in ABA. “We have some special ships our pilots are planning on b…

On Saturday between the hours of 16:00 and 20:00 thousands of ships will be exploded in Ouelletta during the ABA Frigate Free for All. But why should you come to the event? This is your chance! Within the context of Eve the tables are often skewed against you. You know exactly what I am talking about. You're young, you like to focus on mining, industry, staying out of trouble...whatever it is you enjoy doing in Eve. This is your chance to let your hair down and have some pew pew fun. All with a minimum of risk. And while I'd be the last person to tell you it is going to be perfectly safe, within the normal context of Eve, the FFA is at least balanced in your favor. It is as close as you can get to a fair shake in this game. For a few hours you'll be on the field with other players in the same kind of ships, with the same kind of skills, doing the same kind of things. Nothing is "fair" in this universe, but this is as close as it can get for a brief moment in time. A…

On Saturday May 23rd, A Band Apart in association with Streamfleet, will be holding a FFA: Frigate Free For All in Ouelletta. Open to all players young and old, the FFA will feature 4,000 FREE Frigates to be handed out to participants during the four hours of the event, as well as very special event "events" to be announced in the coming weeks. Not to mention prizes!

"The FFA was terrific, This was the best time I ever had in eve." - Saki

These events are huge, you can see the results from our last one in that image above. But it is also the perfect place for any player, no matter what you do in-game or your experience level, to get a taste for PvP in as safe and friendly an environment that you can find in New Eden. The ships are FREE. All the fights will be between Frigates and we'll even have some places for you to get on bigger ship killmails along the way.

More details will be announced as we get closer to the date, but be sure to mark your calendars now …

"This was the best event I have ever participated in after 15 years of playing the game. Thank you Rixx and A Band Apart for all your hard work! o7" - Solidus Zero via Twitter Saturday hundreds and hundreds of Capsuleers grabbed free Frigates and headed into space to find combat, duels, insane battles at the Sun, and do it all over again for four straight hours during our FFA in Ouelletta. Nearly 6,000 ships exploded in glorious balls of fire during the event. All in all A Band Apart handed out over 3,200 fully fit Frigates. You can watch the entire thing over on Streamfleet thanks to Corvus Onzo and Streamfleet, ISD Thalack, CCP Convict, CCP Aurora, and everyone else who helped make the event such a massive success.

This was simply the best FFA of the six I've created and hosted in Eve so far. You never know what might happen, as I kept telling everyone "this is Eve" so anything is possible. But aside from Snuff hot-dropping a Moros, and some Russians causing som…

Our Wednesday fleet this week was yet another Crow based roam down into Pure Blind. Lufax would be FC'ing as usual. But this week had a little extra spice because I had been contacted by Richie Shoemaker (of EON Magazine fame who I've known for over a decade now) who wanted to tag along on our next Null Roam. Perfect. So I decided to make things more interesting and pick up some new Needlejack Filaments.

I was going to do this on Tuesday. But sadly Tuesday was mostly spent without power as our electrical junction box was getting a much need upgrade here at the Pirate Lord Mansion. So Wednesday morning I had to log into my Jita alt and quickly grab some filaments and then safely fly them down thru a War Dec. I admit I was in a hurry. But how complicated could it be? There are only two kinds of Needlejacks - Noise and Signal. Each of which come in 3 different flavors depending on the size of your fleet. And WHOA are they expensive!! So I picked the 3 cheapest ones I could find …